iPhone 8 GPS problems

I think we might be onto something here. I wonder how our phones would react if there was an option to deactivate GPS or Galileo.

I'll write to my Apple Support case to inform them of that possibility.

Thanks for your insight!

Very funny. I'd settle for them fixing a related bug in the phone, which you seemed to acknowledge was a possibility.

I have no idea what the issue is. I just want it fixed. And don't get me started on Firefox 57.0 killing all my extensions.... yeah I know it is not relevant here, but arghhh!

Call me a Luddite, but I would settle for 50% of the functionality if I could get 95% reliability. Too many updates, too many "improvements" these days!

Yes, I hope this issue gets more coverage. The only "news" article I could find was this one. So much for the "software fix coming in iOS 11.2"!

https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/09/some-iphone-8-iphone-x-users-sufferin g-from-gps-issues-software-fix-appears-to-be-coming-in-ios-112

BTW, the link below has a reasonable list of suggestions that may also apply to other GPS apps, including:

Restart phone,

Rest Location Settings,

Reset GPS (airline mode on, reset network, restart, location/system services/timezone OFF

etc.

(nothing that new, although I hadn't thought about the timezone issue)

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216917247-Troubleshooting-GPS-issue s

HI,

I have an Iphone 6s and have been researching this exact same issue for a few months now. The issue came on immediately after upgrading to ios 11.2.1 and after restarting the phone, no more gps.

I have followed all the various instructions, none of which made any difference. I have taken it to the Apple store, they told me to upgrade the phone to the latest version. I have done a complete wipe and factory reset. to be honest, there isn't anything I haven't tried. The process of elimination is exhausted. I may be cynical but I am convinced it is a 'glytch' in the software. Is it intended to make me/us buy the new phone, don't know, that is just speculation.

Anyway, I am about to throw my IPhone in the draw and buy an Oppo R11s android.

sorry, no good news or help from me guys.

The strange thing is that this is also happening to people buying the new phones.

It seems related to iOS11, it could be related to Galileo or to many other things, intentional or not.

Apple Support and Genius have the possibility to check your battery. I know mine was close to the point where Apple considers that all the functions can't work properly. The Genius showed me a neat graph where it was very clear how close my battery was to being problematic.

Could a bad battery prevent proper GPS functionning? As this problem also impacts people with new phones it seems not. But who knows, iOS11 has been proven to have modified something with the battery management.

I installed an app called Battery Life Doctor which shows that my battery is at 50% of the design capacity (900/1810 mAh). I'm waiting for the new 29$ battery to arrive at the Apple Store and hope it will help.

i'm ready to try anything at this point.

Hey Brice, I am curious, was the warning and deletion you got from "the powers that be" done automatically or by a human? Your post was automatically forwarded to my email before it was deleted. Scary that you almost got banned for just recommending we report this issue to the media using a publicly available company e-m-a-i-l address. Wow... If someone from Apple is actually reading these postings, he/she should feel more than welcome to chip in and tell us what is going on, rather than censoring us!

What makes me laugh is that apparently Apple don’t read these discussions boards, yet obviously they are monitored. So they learn nothing of any substance from users which could actually be helpful, their concern is simply to preserve the brand.

They probably just use bots to scan for email addresses and potential legal/media debacles, and only start to pay attention when there are about 10 concurrent discussion threads over 40 pages or so long! Google has a Top Contributor system, where experienced users who help a lot are given direct access to Google employees and act as go-betweens in situations like this. I don't know if Apple has a similar set-up, but it might be good to have one...

.... if anybody there were to pay attention to suggestions like these 😉

These forums are definitely monitored by humans. That said the monitoring job is not to supply technical help apparently but to keep the forum clear of "inappropriate" content. In my case I got a polite email from a human that a small part of my post was removed. The part that was removed was that I was speculating on the future of the iPhone X. The rest of my post, including that I returned the X and bought a Google Pixel 2, was left intact. So I felt the moderators were being relatively restrained at least on my post.

My 2 cents is that there are a few different issues here. In my own case the IOS version was not the issue - returning to my iPhone 7 the GPS was once again perfect. So in my case at least it is clearly something in the hardware of the X itself. Whether that can be fixed someday with a software update is the unknown. Since few if any posters ever indicated that a new phone solved it 100%, I decided not to even try and just gave up and collected a refund.

The warning email is a generic one and does not show if it's a human or a machine pressing "send".

I believe it's a human because of the time it took for some of my posts to be deleted. If it was a machine it would be quicker and approximately at the same speed each time. Another reason why I believe it's a human is because of the huge amount of false positive that would be reported if it was just a machine reading.

It's probably algorithms that draw attention of a human.

I'm scared 🙂

Just browsing the web I stumble an article about Google building phones. The top comment isn't encouraging at buying the Pixel 2: Google is good at building phones but terrible at selling them | Ars Technica

Ok so I have been doing more testing having gone right through tech support to the point where I had the hardware test done with no faults reported. I have had my 8 plus next to my wifes 7 with more test software I have just purchased. There is a difference between the phones with regard to the signal strengths from the satelites. The 7 is fairly steady in the green zone for signal strength occasionly dropping to the orange zone however the 8 plus hits the same levels in the green but frequentely drops to the orange zone I would say about 75 percent more drops than the 7. It seems that the 8 plus is really struggling to hold on to a good satalite signal. Interstingly against my Ipad pro, the pro is rock steady in the green all the time. All phones have latest ios and set up with the same software, the phones purchased on the same day. I will try and do some more testing at the week end when I can get my wifes phone off her.

I really liked the X. Face recognition worked fine, beautiful screen, good size, fast. Drifting GPS was a deal killer for me though. I returned it and bought the Pixel 2. The Pixel 2 conveniently came with a cable and application that captured all my iMessages and even loaded the same apps (more or less) from my IPhone 7. After a month my impressions are still very good. Its is the same league as the iPhone X. The fingerprint reader on the rear is convenient. For some people with a deep long term investment in the Apple ecosystem it would be a very painful conversion, but I was already using gmail and google photos on my iphone so it was a trivial switchover.

After having the iphone X issue and getting zero help, I switched back to my iphone 7. The GPS at first worked fine with the 7. Then, yesterday, it began having the same skipping and lagging issue as the X.

I then put my sim card into my Samsung S8. I almost didn't remember what is was like to have a map follow my location as I drive and work like a charm. You get used to the iphone ecosystem but like I told the support guy that kept calling with no answers...'We shouldn't be bug testing for Apple for free.'

To the person that said that only a few people have the GPS issue with their iphone X. I don't buy it. Everyone around me has the issue and most people don't get onto the forums. It's a big problem and Apple needs to come clean and take care of it's customers.

For now, I'm staying with my S8 and won't be going back to Apple voluntarily anytime in the near future.

Decided to try the GPS diagnostics app on my iPhone X, my old 5S and wife’s 6S.

The signal on the 5S is the strongest by far, often near the maximum. The X signal never matches that on the 5S, it’s generally about 25/30% weaker. To my surprise the 6S also was poor, sometimes the same as the X and sometimes lower but never higher.